Sun Tea

It was 100 degrees in the sun yesterday with 70+% humidity, a good day for very little except swimming and making sun tea.
You need a big glass jar, 2 gallons or so. Plastic won’t work, the container has to be glass. I found one for $2 on clearance at Walmart.
I used mint regular and green tea, 4 bags for 5 cups of water. You put the tea bags and the water in the jar and let it sit in the sun for 3-5 hours.
Sun tea is mellow, and I much prefer it to brewed ice tea. It goes without saying that even mentioning it in the same sentence with powdered ice tea mixes, those convenience food disasters that taste like bitter sawdust, would be heretical.
The caveat is that because the water isn’t boiled, sun tea must be consumed quickly, within a day or so. In the Dog Days of August, though, this is not difficult to do.

Gardener’s Diary

It’s been raining off and on all day.
Re-planted the first two Miss Kims, removed the burlap and the ties. Fed the front gardens.
Checked out some gorgeous cherry and pear trees at Mahoney’s Osterville. Waiting for markdowns in about a month.
Even though these are the dog days, Fall has started to creep into the bones.
It’s not just the appearance of mums at supermarkets or “back to school” sales, it’s the inclination of the light, more like September than August.

Summer and Onion Rings

On the way back from trips to the NH seacoast when my sister and I were kids, we had a must-do stop: the onion ring stand at Salisbury Beach.
The rings were big, about 1/2 inch wide, and dipped in a batter that fried up light but crispy and not overly sweet.
The rings were served in paper boxes, with a good half dozen “extras” piled on a straw in a display of abundance.

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Body Type Profiling?

We’ve been reading a lot lately about racial profiling, i.e., making assumptions about the behavior and motivations of our fellow citizens based on appearance, particularly skin color.
In spite of the gamut of non-discrimination in employment laws, there are some “professionals” out there who nonetheless want to train job interviewers to reject or accept candidates based on physical characteristics: in this case, body type.
I received an email today from an outfit in Texas that claims to be “a human resources company dedicated to helping employers attract, then screen applicants for job fit.”
Their seminar on “Interviewing – the Behavioral Approach” includes a section on Somatotyping, a self-described “invaluable” technique “to identify behavioral traits in the applicant that can impact job performance”.
Somatotyping was developed by a Harvard psychologist, William Sheldon (1898-1977), who used photographs of naked Ivy League undergraduates to classify human bodies into the three physical types that have become part of our daily vocabulary: ectomorph, mesomorph and endomorph.

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Gardener’s Diary

Roses are blooming, couple of Nasturtium flowers, first Hibiscus bloom yesterday.
I’ve been giving the grasses more water and they seem to be doing better.
Robert got a sunburn on his legs during sailing yesterday.

Gardener’s Diary

Finished off the driveway with a half yard of 3/8 inch stone, finished off the front garden with the last 2 feet of mulch, bought the casings for the new windows.
Drenched. I’ve been drinking bathtubs full of anything liquid.

Gardener’s Diary

Ryan, his brother Matt and Matt’s girlfriend Nicole surprised me today, ready to go to work on R&M Landscaping’s first commission, a serious cleanup of the garden in front of the fence.
I wish I’d taken before and after photos, because they did a fine job edging, weeding and mulching, and certainly improved the look of the front yard.
I did yet another transfer station and grocery run while Ryan and Matt moved the last of the construction left-overs, a pair of glass doors, out of sight. The boys also put the grill back on the deck, thus completing the chores I couldn’t do myself.

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“Respect” and Sergeant Crowley

Let me start by saying that I think Sgt. James Crowley is an cowardly and arrogant ass, hiding behind the skirts of his boss and his union, unwilling to admit that he made a mistake in the way he handled the now-infamous arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates.
I’ve known one other Crowley, a woman with a gigantic ego so easily bruised that she was offended when my department failed to give her credit for a minor suggestion she offered around an equally minor point of discussion.

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Gardener’s Diary

The siding and new windows on the back of the house are installed, and between Ed and I, we’ve pretty much cleaned up the mess of construction materials that’s been a eyesore for weeks.
There are still some odds and ends to be completed, including reattaching the dryer vent, an oversight which I discovered last night to my chagrin.

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New Garden

Yes, there is, at long last, a real garden in the back yard, and around the new deck.
It is beautiful, mirage-like against the backdrop of pine trees, ferns and low-lying woodland shrubs.
The garden includes Miss Kim lilacs, hydrangeas, iris, roses, Sweet Summer, St. John’s wort, Shasta daisies, dahlias, Foxglove, Hibiscus, lavender, grasses, day lilies.
I planted annuals in the oval offset and along the Northwest side of the porch.